Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  He damn well knew he couldn’t count on his own horse being back there where he had left it with the others.

  As the last of the ponies blew past him in the dark, thundering through the tall willows, Bass knew he was alone, and on foot.

  Realizing what that meant for no more than a heartbeat before he heard the Blackfoot cries coming closer and closer. Footsteps, the rustle of underbrush, the strident call of anguish, rage, blood lust.

  He looked down at the dead warrior, hoping to find some sort of firearm. Nothing more than that knife and a quiver strapped over his shoulder, filled with arrows and a short bow.

  Jerking around at the nearing clamor, Scratch decided the time would never be better to make a run for it—just as more than a half-dozen warriors burst from the far brush on foot.

  “Bass!”

  The voice yanked him around as he was turning to plunge into the willow thicket for his rifle.

  Trying to get any sound free past the clog in his throat was an impossible feat as he stammered Hatcher’s name.

  Jack burst out of the brush on horseback between Titus and the onrushing warriors. “Up, coon! Heave up now!”

  “My gun!”

  “Get it, sumbitch!”

  By the time he whirled back with it, Jack held out a hand from the back of the Blackfoot pony he controlled with no more than the single buffalo-hair rein. In a frightened circle it pranced around Bass one time, then a second, as Jack struggled for control and Scratch stuffed the knife into its sheath. The two men locked one another’s forearms while Titus hopped round and round at the center of the circle.

  The cries grew louder, renewed now that the prey was in sight.

  “Dammit—get up here or we’re both wolf bait!”

  “G’won … I can’t—”

  With a mighty grunt Hatcher reared back, dragging Bass off the ground enough that he was able to swing one leg over the hind flanks of the pony, his free hand reaching out to seize Jack’s buckskin shirt. Both of them jabbing heels into the horse’s ribs, they lunged into the willow thicket.

  Arrows smacked the branches around them. Gunfire boomed behind them, the air on either side of their heads alive with the tormented whine of lead balls.

  “Far as hitting anything with a gun, never met me a Injun wuth a red piss!” Hatcher roared as the willow whipped their arms and legs and cheeks unmercifully.

  Bass’s left side burned in the cold—like a sudden, raw opening of tender flesh. Gazing down at the wound while he laid his hand over it, Bass waited a moment, then brought the hand away, feeling the pain already, even before he saw the dark stain on his palm.

  “Should’ve left me behind,” he grumbled as he secured a better hold on Hatcher just as they broke free of the willow onto the sagebrush plain.

  “Hell with you, nigger!” Hatcher grumbled. “I ain’t never left no man ahin’t … and I ain’t about to start now. Mangy as yer carcass is—wuthless, no-good—”

  “There they are!” Scratch exclaimed through gritted teeth, fighting the pain in his side where the bullet’s path made him want to cry.

  “Damn if it ain’t!”

  Far ahead of them galloped more than forty horses, their hooves hammering the flaky hardpan ground as they were driven by the whooping cries of the other four trappers struggling to keep the Blackfoot ponies from scattering this way or that at either side of their path.

  For a moment Bass turned slightly to peer over his shoulder behind them. He was beginning to feel faint, wanting nothing better than to have Hatcher stop so he could climb off, lie down, and sleep. Instead Titus bit down hard on his lower lip—startling himself with the pain that for a moment made him forget the terrible fire in his side.

  “W-we gonna make it, Jack?”

  Hatcher turned his head quickly to look behind them. “I do believe, Titus Bass!”

  “You mean we pulled that off?”

  “Less’n them sumbitches got more ponies—and I do believe we got ’em all—they ain’t coming after us but on foot!”

  Suddenly Titus was growing light-headed and the ground was starting to spin beneath the pony’s hooves as it struggled beneath the weight of two men. “I ain’t … ain’t …”

  “Hang on!”

  “Can’t hang much more—”

  “Ye hit?”

  “’Fraid so, Jack.”

  “Eegod, Scratch!” he screeched, yanking back on the single buffalo-hair rein.

  His eyelids grown so heavy. “K-keep goin’!”

  “I wanna see how bad ye’re—”

  “We’re gonna have company soon if’n you pull up.”

  Hatcher jerked his head around, gazing down their backtrail, spotting the distant figures Bass had sighted only moments before. Horsemen. There weren’t many—but enough to make for trouble.

  Jack sighed, “Ye gonna hold on?”

  “Like a goddamned tick.”

  “Hep-ha!” Hatcher cried, jabbing his moccasins into the horse’s belly, jolting a sudden burst of speed from it.

  Burying his face in Hatcher’s bony back, Titus drank in deep drafts of air, realizing that it was no longer night. Sometime in the last few minutes, the sky had begun to brighten in prelude to sunrise. Now they’d be all the easier to track for that handful of riders. Ponies the trappers hadn’t driven off. And where there was a handful, a man could always figure there might likely be more.

  He wondered how Kinkead was doing, remembering the sight of that arrow shaft quivering every time Matthew drew in a ragged breath, shuddering every time he exhaled. How they had struggled to hold the big man down to pull it out. All the blood as Hatcher dug the stone head out of the thick muscle. Arrow or bullet—who was to say what was better … what a man could survive …

  “Help me get him down!”

  Some of the black curtain was pulled back, and Bass came awake as the hands grabbed him, feeling himself pulled, allowing himself to fall against them clumsily. The others laid him out as Hatcher slid from the heaving pony’s bare back. It was plain the creature didn’t take to being so close to these strange-smelling white men. It nearly pulled Jack off the ground with its first lunge, snorting and rearing back.

  Hatcher balled up his hard-boned fist and smacked the animal with a powerful haymaker of a blow, landing it right behind the nostrils.

  Staggering to the side, the pony righted itself, more wary now of the man who still gripped its buffalo-hair rein.

  “Take this, Caleb.” Jack handed that rein to Wood. “Solomon, turn Scratch on his side.” He knelt beside Bass. “Lemme have a look-see while the rest of ye get ready to welcome Bug’s Boys to our li’l hidee-hole.”

  “That makes only three guns, Jack,” Rowland complained.

  “Four,” Hatcher corrected. “Caleb, tie that jughead off and get yerself a spot to watch the backtrail.”

  Somewhere beyond them back down the trail, the sun was breaking over the edge of the earth. But here past the mouth of this narrow canyon, it was still shadow. Breath vapor steamed in frosty halos surrounding every head. Bass grunted as he was turned, his eyes struggling to focus as he looked up, around at the faces dancing in a watery haze over him.

  “It come clean through, boys,” Jack declared, finding the exit wound on Bass’s belly.

  “Damn lucky, ain’t he?” Solomon Fish exclaimed, supporting the wounded man’s shoulders.

  “Titus Bass lucky?” Hatcher snorted as he leaned close to examine the entrance wound, pushing this way and that with his fingertips. “Any other man I’d call lucky if’n he was hit by a Blackfoot ball that went right on through his side the way this’un did. But from what we know about this son of a bitch, the way he lived to tell of a ’Rapaho scalpin’, hung like a tick on the back of that damned bitch of a mule long enough to be in the right place and the right time when the Snakes shot that white medicine calf … and then got his fat pulled from the fire with the rest of us last spring when that white medicine calf’s hide told them grateful Snakes whe
n we was all about to go under … hell, Solomon! I never knowed any man more lucky than Titus Bass!”

  Elbridge Gray turned to say, “Born under a good star, that child was.”

  “Damn if he wasn’t,” Jack sighed, leaning back. “’Pears to me that ball went right on through ’thout striking anything but skin and muscle.”

  Caleb whistled low in amazement. “Almost makes a man wanna keep him around for our own good luck.”

  Hatcher nodded, pushing some of Bass’s long, stringy hair out of his eyes as Titus struggled to focus on the brigade leader. “Damn right, boys—this here’s a good man to have along.”

  “J-jack—”

  Hatcher leaned close. “I got bad news for ye, Scratch.”

  “Bad?”

  “Ye’re gonna live, ye mangy, flea-bit no-count.”

  “Gonna make it, am I? By damn that’s good news—”

  “That is less’n the Blackfoots catch up to us and pin us down till they can finish ye off.”

  Bass squinted his eyes against the rise of pain. “We ain’t gonna let ’em, are we?”

  Jack grinned, his overly large teeth the color of pin acorns. “Not by a long chalk, we ain’t.” He turned. “Caleb—crawl on up there and see what them riders are up to at the mouth of the canyon.”

  Scratch heard Caleb Wood move off. “I got my pistol, rifle too, if’n any of you can use ’em.”

  “Hell, Bass,” Gray spouted. “You ain’t hurt so bad you can’t hold on to ’em your own self.”

  Fish added, “Might be you’ll get a chance to use ’em yet.”

  A few long minutes later Titus fluttered open his eyes slightly, fighting to focus on Hatcher’s face hovering over his. “You get your horse guard?”

  “Didn’t get the chance,” Jack replied. “I spooked a horse, so that red son of a bitch jumped out into the meadow on me. Right about the time a second one showed up.”

  “Second one?” Rowland asked.

  “I figger it was another guard coming out to take him his turn at watch,” Jack explained. “Boys, there ain’t two ways about it: plain as paint I’m ’bout as unlucky as Titus Bass born under a good star!”

  “Let’s hope his star gonna shine down on all of us,” Caleb huffed as he crabbed back into that ring the trappers formed around Bass.

  Solomon asked, “More coming?”

  Wood nodded, licking his dry lips. “See’d ’em. Coming a ways off.”

  “How many?” Rowland demanded in a rising voice.

  “It don’t matter how many,” Hatcher declared as he rose from his knees. “We can’t none of us stay here to let ’em finish us off.”

  “What about Bass?” Fish asked.

  Jack looked down at Titus. “What about it, Scratch?”

  He struggled to rise on an elbow and tried out a weak grin on all of them. “Boys, if Mad Jack here says we best be making tracks—then we best be on our way.”

  “Get the horses!” Elbridge hollered as he wheeled about, sweeping up a rein.

  “Put them Blackfoot ponies out in front of us and keep ’em going,” Jack ordered. “No matter what, keep them ponies going.”

  Hatcher was the next up after throwing his saddle onto a fresh mount. He had Fish and Wood heft Bass up behind him.

  “Now, get me one of them picket ropes,” Jack said. “Wrap it round us both so ye can tie him to me.”

  “D-do me up tight, fellas,” Bass demanded of them, knowing the chances were good that he would grow too weak to hold on to Hatcher by himself. “I don’t wanna fall off so them Blackfoot niggers get me.”

  They made a half-dozen loops around the two men, then knotted the ends in front of Hatcher so he could free himself or Bass if the need arose.

  “Get a leg up, boys!” Jack cried. “Move them ponies out!”

  Wide-eyed, Solomon said, “Only one way out of this here canyon, Jack.”

  “We’ll run right into them niggers waiting for the rest to come up!” Caleb shrieked.

  “That’s just what I figger Jack wants to do,” Solomon shouted.

  Hatcher nudged his heels into the horse. “Right, the first whack! Do our best to run right on over ’em on our way out! Hep! Hep-ha!”

  As the horse’s powerful flanks surged beneath him, Bass locked his fingers around the loops of rope imprisoning Hatcher’s chest. Ahead of them the others were yelling and screaming, driving the horses before them, sure to scare the billy-be-hell out of the half-dozen or so Blackfoot waiting at the mouth of the canyon.

  “You really gonna ride right into ’em?” Scratch asked against the back of Hatcher’s neck.

  “Damn right we are!” he said, turning his head slightly. “A goddamned sit-up, straight-on ride-through!”

  Cautiously, Bass loosened the hold he had with his right hand and slid it between himself and Hatcher until he filled his hand with the butt of the flintlock pistol.

  “Hold tight, son!” Jack warned. “We’re about to do-si-do!”

  What few war cries the Blackfoot raised were swiftly drowned out by the hammer of hooves on the flaky hardpan of the earth’s crust as the horses and trappers galloped into the open, heading right for their enemy who waited among the sage and buckbrush in the day’s new light. Hatcher’s men shouted back with their own bravado, hurtling through the few who had dared to follow them.

  A lone gunshot. Bass figured it had to be one of the boys. The Blackfoot simply didn’t have that many weapons, and chances were good they wouldn’t dare try to shoot their weapons from horseback anyway. What Jack had said was true: Indians simply weren’t much in the way of marksmanship.

  “Take a lookee there, Scratch!” Hatcher called.

  He turned his head, immediately catching sight of the warrior racing toward them at an angle—putting himself on a collision course not that far ahead. In one hand the Blackfoot held the elk-antler quirt he used to whip the pony’s rear flank. And in the hand that clutched the pony’s rein, the warrior also held a long wooden club from, the end of which protruded a long, wide knife blade. Two feathers streamed back from his long, unfettered hair while the pony raced around and over the stunted sagebrush.

  “Maybe I should ride right into him?” Jack mused.

  “You do, you’ll knock me off,” Scratch replied.

  “I’ll wager that’s what he’s fixin’ to do.”

  All the jarring, jolting, side-to-side hammering inflicted on his wound was about to overwhelm Bass. For a moment he bit down on his lower lip again, then said, “You pull up—I’ll shoot the son of a bitch.”

  “I ain’t stoppin’ for nothing! Not when I got a head of steam behind me!”

  It was like a nausea that threatened to surge up his gullet, a blackness doing its best to put an end to the torment in his side. And out of the shrill ringing in his ears, Bass heard the other pony. Opening his eyes, he struggled to focus: discovering the warrior racing just behind them, just over his right shoulder.

  “Hatcher!”

  “I know, goddammit!”

  Bass watched the Blackfoot switch the reins into his free hand, beginning to swing his left arm back. “Can you shoot him, Jack!”

  “It’s all I can do to keep us on top of this damned horse!”

  With a sudden swerving lurch, the warrior brought his pony sharply to the left as he swung the long club forward. Both Hatcher and Bass ducked out of the way as the knife blade hissed past their heads—that sudden shift of weight causing the horse below them to stumble and sidestep at full stride. Both trappers barely held on as the animal dodged through the sagebrush: Hatcher locked on to the saddle, Titus locked on to him.

  Bass cried, “Son of a bitch’s coming back for another go!”

  “He’ll keep it up till he gets one of us,” Hatcher growled, “or he drops us both!”

  “Can you ram your horse into him?”

  “S’pose I can,” Jack admitted grittily. “But it might spill us!”

  “He comes close enough—just give ’im the idea yo
u’re gonna.”

  For the next few moments Bass was able to watch the look of grim determination on the warrior’s face as the Blackfoot inched his animal closer and closer to the white man’s horse. He saw how the man’s hair was cut with long bangs that tossed in the wind, the hair on the top of his head tied up with a few feathers, like a bold challenge to try taking that topknot. And he saw how those black-cherry eyes glittered with hate.

  Titus wondered how anyone could ever possess such hate like that for someone he didn’t know. Besides the horses—why would these warriors carry such rage for the white men? After all this time, were they still licking their wounds after being driven off by the Shoshone last spring? To Scratch’s way of thinking, even that could not account for the unadulterated hatred and contempt he read in the Blackfoot’s eyes as the warrior drew closer and closer.

  “Now!” Bass screamed.

  Hatcher was right on the money, yanking hard on the rein. Their horse twisted suddenly, just as Jack yanked back to the left to correct it. That sudden lunge did the trick: enough to make the warrior pull off.

  And when the Indian realized what the white men had done, even more rage clouded his face.

  “I gotta get rid of the son of a bitch,” Jack grumbled.

  “This horse ain’t gonna last long under us both,” Bass said into the back of Hatcher’s neck, feeling himself breaking into a fevered sweat. “Maybe we get a chance, you get us stopped, tie me on another horse. This’un can’t carry us much—”

  “Shuddup! I ain’t about to trust ye to make it on yer own.”

  Off to the right, the warrior was coming at them again as they reached more open ground, the land falling away gently toward the distant river valley, that beckoning vale rushing at them with its wide border of green disclosing its meandering course to these battle-weary travelers.

  “Then gimme a chance to shoot him,” Bass demanded.

  “How in the devil’s eggs are ye gonna shoot ’im?” Hatcher snorted, getting a new grip on the horse’s rein. “Ye can barely hang on to me as it is, child!”

  “J-just … g-get him on the other side of us.”

  “Don’t let go of me, Bass!”

  “I ain’t, Jack,” he vowed weakly. “Just get him on our left. Cross over, hard and sharp.”